


First Steps

by FancifulRivers



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ableism, Ankle Braces, Canes, Deaf Character, Disabled Character, Gen, Hogwarts First Year, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 01:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10776822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancifulRivers/pseuds/FancifulRivers
Summary: Hermione begins her first year with high hopes for the wizarding world."Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come." -Anne Lamott





	First Steps

 It isn't how she thought it would be, when she read the stories. Hermione Granger looks at the lengths and lengths of staircase, stretching high above her head, so high she can't even see the top, swallows hard, and puts her cane on the first step.

It always starts with the first step.

It isn't easy. She's mocked- at first for her heritage, later for her cane. She is tripped by students with green badges and blue and even some yellow (it is a small comfort that she never catches a glimpse of red and gold). Her cane is stolen twice before Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick put a multitude of spells on it. Professor Flitwick's wand is a blur as he casts and sparks flurry up so high, Hermione can barely see him through it all. When they're finished, she shyly (she's always shy when it comes to things like this, when it comes to her cane and the hearing aid in one ear and the braces strapped over her ankles) requests that Professor McGonagall add a stripe of red and gold to the top.

When she enters Potions class, Professor Snape tries to have her cane taken away. He gets a Stinging Hex for his pains, courtesy of her Head of House's protections, and a private meeting later with the Headmaster. She tucks herself away in a corner of the grand (yet very strange) office, trying not to listen to the greasy-haired, sallow-faced professor sneering insults about her and her capabilities when he's never tested them, and the anger she can hear in Professor Dumbledore's voice, under the twinkle. She's allowed to keep her cane, and her partner gets the ingredients from the school cupboard. It's with a sharp sting of pride that Hermione always turns in perfect work.

Her roommates chatter about fashion and makeup, and she can't understand it. Perhaps it's because they've never known anything but the fizz of magic deep in their stomachs and eddying through the room on currents of air. They don't know what it's like to be different, to lug around Chemistry books instead of Potions, to look out the window and daydream about if magic was real. To keep a constant, cautious eye out for wet patches of floor or uneven, prickly bits of gravel.

Then she walks in on Lavender before Lavender's put on her face and there's a splotchy pink birthmark stretching across one cheek like the shadow of a bird's wing and Lavender goes deathly pale and screams at her to get out, _out_! Hermione tactfully (for once) does not comment on the tears glistening in Lavender's eyes and backs out, cane thumping on the floor as she wanders back down to the common room. Lavender sends her sharp, prickly glances for weeks after, but Hermione never says anything.

Herbology is her favourite class, though she won't admit it to anyone. Her forte lies in dusty classrooms and crisp textbooks, but this- There is magic in the dirt buried beneath her fingernails, in the plants that creep along her gloves and bloom when no one's looking. It's an old magic, a  _familiar_  magic, and when she goes home that summer, she requests once again to help her mum in the garden, a delight she'd given up years ago when her pain grew worse.

Madam Pomfrey coaxes her into the Hospital Wing every week, attempting this potion and that salve. Hermione tolerates it all with ill grace. She can't say she wants to be in pain, but the wizarding world doesn't understand that some things don't need to be fixed.

When the troll comes and she's sitting in a girls' bathroom, trying to pretend that a redheaded boy's thoughtless words haven't wounded her, she screams. She can't run and everyone else must be at the feast. Though she tries, a cane is no match for a troll's club. It's painful relief when Harry Potter and the boy who put her there to begin with rescue her. It feels good, too, though, staking out a corner of the common room later to finish dinner. She thought she'd never feel hungry again, not after looking down at an unconscious mountain troll a hair away from murdering her, but it's easier to forget when she's tucked into new, clean robes and the rest of Gryffindor is talking and laughing around her. Ron asks about her hearing aid and Harry thumps him in the shoulder before she smiles and explains. She doesn't mind questions like this.

It gets easier. Harry and Ron help her research accessibility spells in her spare time (though Ron moans about it every time she pulls out another book with dust on the spine and age wafting from its pages). She finds them in dribs and drabs, scattered across disciplines like so many lost treasures. She can't _do_  any of them yet, but it doesn't matter. No matter how long it takes, she will.

Over the winter holidays, she's exuberant, surprising her parents with bright, chattering questions about their last several months and promising (carefully edited) tales of her adventures at Hogwarts. She doesn't know how to explain to them that the world of magic isn't as magical as she thought it would be, but it's worlds better than primary school and the neighbourhood children's taunts. (She doesn't call them Muggles, even in the privacy of her own head, though she proudly stamps 'Muggleborn' across her soul every time she steps through Hogwarts' massive front doors.)

Harry's in danger. She knows this (knows this better than he knows himself, because she reads and she can see between the lines, she can feel the bone-deep fear trembling between each letter in every breathless account of the end of the first wizarding war), but she doesn't understand why the headmaster, the man who went toe-to-toe with Professor Snape and made him back down with a twinkle, can't seem to see it.

When the headmaster vanishes after the exams at the end of the year, she thinks she knows why, and it makes her feel sick to her stomach. Her throat hurts when Professor McGonagall dismisses their concerns and she looks at the stripe of red and gold on the top of her cane, still as vivid as if it had been applied yesterday, and wonders when it's supposed to mean something.

As the invisibility cloak drapes over all three of them, Hermione wonders if maybe she shouldn't come after all. Maybe she should watch after Neville and let Harry and Ron go on. It's his quest after all (she can't articulate why). Then she takes a deep breath and shuffles along with the boys. Perhaps the Sorting Hat was right after all.

In the end, it's Harry who goes on by himself. Anger burns in her stomach when she makes her way back to Ron and the Headmaster hurtles past her, robes flapping around his ankles. _It's not fair, you know_ , she wants to shout after him. _He's eleven! And so are we._

Life isn't fair.

Harry's unconscious and bloodied, but she can see the proof of his victory, still loosely clasped between his fingers. She thought it would give her a sense of accomplishment. It just makes her sad instead and she says nothing until they're all settled in the Hospital Wing.

"You knew," she tells the Headmaster quietly, fumbling with the edge of her blanket like it carries the answers she wants.

"I guessed," he corrects her, voice hushed. "It wasn't until I reached the Ministry that I realised the place I most needed to be was where I'd just left."

She opens her mouth to object (with what, she doesn't know), but he pats her shoulder and stands up, and she knows the conversation is over. For now.

"Will you come back next year?" Her mother asks her at King's Cross, after she's stepped off the train (and resisted the urge to trip Malfoy). Hermione looks back- at Ron, who's surrounded by a gaggle of identical redheads, and Harry, who looks dwarfed and miserable by a man who bears a strong resemblance to an angry walrus- then up at the Hogwarts Express.

"Of course," she says brightly. Her wand is a cozy weight in her pocket. "I can't wait."


End file.
